Free Republic

A member of the European Parliament suggested to the European Central Bank (ECB) on Sunday that BioNTech founders Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci be depicted on one of the notes. German Free Democrat (FDP) politician Moritz Körner was the first one to make the suggestion. “Important European figures like the BioNTech founding couple Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci should be printed on the new euro notes,” said Körner, as quoted by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “Their work has saved the lives of millions of Europeans. The trajectory of their life is an impressive story about integration, progress, entrepreneurship, scientific...

“We want to set the record straight — everyone has a right to self-determined death.” With these words, Free Democrat Member of Parliament Katrin Helling-Plahr introduced a cross-party draft bill to the German parliament that would regulate legal assisted suicide for the first time. The ban on so-called business-like assisted suicide in Germany was lifted almost a year ago by a ruling of the constitutional court. But without legislation to regulate the process, the right has existed “only on paper” for many people, as Helling-Plahr put it on Twitter. According to the bill, which was introduced by Helling-Plahr along with...

The German government is generally critical of US President Donald Trump’s politics, especially when it comes to questions of war and peace in the Middle East. Last year, Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Germany, France and the UK, among others, had struggled to secure and wanted to maintain at all costs. The situation appeared to escalate dangerously after the drone attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia on September 14. Iran-aligned Houthi rebels fighting a Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen have claimed responsibility. The US immediately blamed Iran, even as the Saudi government...

Wolfgang Kubicki, the deputy chairman of the opposition Free Democrats (FDP), said Richard Grenell’s repeated interference in German sovereignty should prompt Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to immediately declare Grenell persona non grata.“Any US diplomat who acts like a high commissioner of an occupying power must learn that our tolerance also knows its limits,” said Kubicki, who is also one of five deputy speakers of Germany’s Bundestag parliament. Grenell had on Tuesday criticized Germany’s military spending plans within NATO as insufficient, prompting Kubicki to accuse the envoy of “interfering” repeatedly in political issues of a sovereign country. Grenell’s criticism of Germany’s...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed on Saturday she would start talks with liberals and Greens to try to form a new coalition government after last month's election.Merkel won a fourth term in the September 24th vote but the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) poached one million votes from her conservative bloc, leaving her without an obvious coalition to lead Europe's largest economy. She has already said she would seek exploratory talks on forming an alliance between her CDU/CSU bloc and two smaller parties, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the ecologist Greens. Merkel said in a speech in the eastern...

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) have their nose ahead of the other minor parties in Germany, putting them on course to become the third largest party in the Bundestag after September’s election, a new poll has found. The poll published by INSA and Bild on Tuesday found that the far-right AfD are on course to win 10 percent of the vote at the September 24th vote. That would put them in third place behind the Social Democrats (SPD) on 25 percent and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) on 37 percent. The far-right party, who were set up in 2013 and...

Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois September 15, 1858 MR. DOUGLAS' SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country. Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the...

Right-wing tide surges straight to the heart of EuropeBy Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels (Filed: 22/04/2002) EUROPE'S rising Right-wing tide swept into the core countries of the European Union yesterday, rocking Germany's Social Democrats and threatening France's socialist government.Over the last two years, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, and Norway have all turned against the centre-Left consensus that had such a lock on Europe during the 1990s, opting instead for law-and-order parties promising tax cuts, deregulation, and a much tougher line on immigrants.But the pace is now quickening as ever more radical figures build mass support, often outflanking the conventional centre-Right...